A Mandate to Accelarate Social Justice and Redress
THE NCR IS COMMITTED TO REMOVE INVALID AND UNLAWFUL DEBT REVIEW FLAGS
"While the NCR endeavours to resolve received complaints within a period of not more than 30 days from receipt, this depends on several factors, such as gathering of all related evidence, the level of cooperation from parties concerned and the nature of the complaint." : Advocate Kedilatile Legodi, acting company secretary at the NCR
Deregistered Debt Counsellors.
Over 3000 debt counsellors are no longer operating!
A comprehensive study conducted by the AACS has revealed that more than 1.9 million consumers are burdened with a permanent debt review flag placed by debt counsellors who are no longer involved in debt counselling and/or their practicing licenses were revoked by the Tribunal Court due to misconduct.
Deregistered Debt Counsellors:
* Voluntary Cancelled = 490
* Registration Lapsed = 2477
* Cancelled by the Tribunal = 27
Our mandate is to collect a database of all consumers who are placed under debt review by deregistered debt counsellors through the ADRD System and submit to the NCR and ensure that the debt review flag is removed from the consumers' credit records.
Fraud and Non Compliance
There is a spike in fraudulent and unlawful debt review placing. There are thousands of cases where consumers are fraudulently placed and flagged as under debt review without their consent. while thousands more remain locked under debt review due to debt councellors non compliance with prescribed regulations. The ADRD System is capturing and submitting this data for the NCR to investigate and removed the unlawful debt review flags.
The mandate and the design of the ADRD system is a collective directive by the banking, government, labor, and consumer advocacy sectors in response to the staggering number of unjustified and unlawful debt review listings that are harming businesses, disrupting the lives of families, causing severe financial stress on workers and impeding the country's economic growth.
Click this link to Enter the ADRD System: ADRDS
The National Credit Regulator (NCR)
The Urgent mandate to clean the database
In terms of Section 136 of the NCA, the NCR has an obligation to investigate all complaints/disputes and ensure that the information that is displayed on the consumer's credit records is correct and accurate.
The NCR is aware of the huge number of consumers who are stuck with a debt review flag placed by deregistered debt counsellors resulting in inacurrate credit bureau information.
The NCR is determined to remove the debt review flag from these consumer's credit records, however, the NCR can only execute the removal when instructed to do so by the consumer in the prescribed manner.
In other words, the NCR needs your help to update its database and clean-up the credit bureaus information.
Click this link to Log a Dispute: Log a Dispute
The Debt Help System (DHS)
The DHS is an NCR software that used by debt counsellors to update with each stage of debt counselling progress. The debt counselling process has 4 stages. Each update on the Dhs is automatically relayed to the credit bureaus to change the notation of the debt review flag to reflect the latest stage of the progress. A lawfully completed debt review process must reflect that a court order was granted.
However, the NCR lacks the capacity to verify every update on the system, and thus rendering the system vulnerable to incorrect or unlawful entries by unscrupulous debt counsellors.
Unless the consumer takes action to report an incorrect or unlawful listing, the flag shall permanently remain on the consumer's credit report.
In terms of Section 136 The National Credit Act (NCA), the consumer is empowered to log a dispute with the NCR to investigate and remove the incorrect or unlawful debt review flag. Only the NCR can instruct the credit bureaus to remove the debt review flag from your credit records (meaning you cannot contact the credit bureaus to dispute the debt review flag)..
Click this link to log a Dispute: Log a Dispute
The Automated Debt Review Dispute System (ADRDS)
Embracing Change - Accelerating the mandate for social justice and redress
The Only System that Talks to the NCR
The ADRD System is an innovation by the AACS commissioned by a collective concern in the banking, government, labor and consumer-advocacy sectors in view of the massive unjustified and unlawfully placed debt review listings which are harming business, families, workers and impacting the country's economic growth.
The ADRD System is designed to accelerate the debt review flag clearance process by capturing the consumer's complaints and conduct preliminary assessment to establish non-compliance or irregulaties in the process of placing you under debt review, as well as the registration status of the debt counsellor.
The system will then instantly send the assessment outcome to the consumer with detailed instructions on the appropriate action and required documentation to log a successful dispute with the NCR.
The consumer will have the option to use the supplied recommended guidelines to log a dispute with the NCR or to activate the ADRD system to log the dispute on their behalf.
Upon receipt of the ADRDS activation instruction, the system will automatically lodge the dispute/complaint with the NCR for investigation and removal of the flag. The system will further trigger periodic resolution progress updates to the NCR and relay feedback and/or final resolution to the consumer. The NCR resolves disputes within 7-30 days depending on the complexity of the investigation.
Click this link to view ADRD System Options: ADRDS Options
The Affidavit
Regardless the nature of the dispute, or the circumstances under which you were placed under debt review an affidavit is compulsory to initiate an investigation.
The law requires that when an allegation of non-compliance, unlawful action, fraudulent activity, violation of regulations, or misconduct is directed at another person or party, you must submit a statement under oath to initiate an investigation.
The NCR cannot initiate an investigation without the affidavit.
The ADRD System will draft a Free Sample Affidavit based on the information you supply and other established aspects of regulatory non-compliance.
Click this link to see Affidavit Service Options: Service Options
Categories of Unlawful Listings
As indicate above it is the onus of the consumer to alert the NCR of any unlawful or incorrect debt review listing. We highly recommend that you take the Free Automated Debt Review Clearance Assessment before you log a dispute in order to receive appropriate recommended action for a successful dispute.
A Call to All Consumers:
Whether you have a complaint or not, we strongly encourage you to submit your details in order to receive alerts when the debt counsellor status change and most importantly to assess if the debt review was conducted in compliance with the prescribed regulations. This is the most important function of the ADRD System.
Reimbursement of Fees:
If you have paid the debt counsellor any service fees, and they did not complete the debt review process as per prescribed regulations (court order not granted), you are entitled to claim reimbusment of the fees you have paid. The ADRD system will advice you if the debt counselling process was not fully completed and guide you on how to claim reimbursement.
Deregistered Debt Counsellor
The NCR lacks the capacity to automatically remove the debt review flag or notify the consumer when the debt counsellor becomes inactive. The onus is on the consumer to find out the debt counsellor status and alert the NCR to facilitate the removal of the flag.
In terms of Section 18(7) of the NCA, all information on the consumer record must be accurate.
Where the debt review flag displays a deregistered debt counsellor, the NCR shall remove it within 7 days.
Unlawful Debt Review
Debt Counselling is a voluntary undertaking where the consumer approaches the debt counsellor to conduct assess of his/her financial circumstance to detemine if you qualify for debt review.
To apply you need to sign a Form 16 and supply your accounts statemens, proof of income and your household expenses.
The debt counselling process is fully completed when an court order is granted.
If you did not sign the Form 16 and supplied this information and/or you did not receive court order, then the debt review flag is unlawful and should be disputed and removed.
Clearance Certificate
When you have settled all accounts that were placed under debt review, the debt counsellor must issue a Clearance Certificate and update the Dhs for the removal of the debt review flag from your credit records.
In the event that the debt counsellor refuse to issue a clearance certificate or is no longer in practice , you need to log a complaint/dispute with the NCR to investigate and facilitate issuance of the clearance certificate and update the Dhs to instruct the credit bureaus to remove the flag from your credit records.